Rest You Merry

This may not get you in a Christmas spirit, but it can ease X-mas headaches. It's a humourous, light campus cozy with a thread of old-fashioned romance.

No offence intended to Americans, but the few U.S. "campus comedies" and campus cozies I've come across just don't compare to most in the British "campus" tradition. Rest You Merry holds it own in both sub-sub-genres. Maybe McLeod's Canadian colonial genes helped her out there!

I've listened to at least one of each of the three MacLeod series on Audible and one other Prof Shandy mystery. This is my favourite to date. I enjoyed the narration. As someone points out in a later Shandy instalment review, McLain produces a couple of weird mispronunciations of isolated and pretty common words. This makes me think he may be site reading, which just raises my admiration for his talent.

As I'm not a fan of Christmas books, I almost skipped this -- but if you like cozies or campus comedies, this will delight no matter the season.

I'm so glad Charlotte MacLeod's mysteries are finally available in audio! I first read this story centuries ago - probably shortly after it was published in 1978 - and I've re-read it every few years since.

The story is set at a small, private agricultural college in New England. At the opening, Professor Peter Shandy has finally decided to take his revenge on all the faculty wives who have been after him for years to decorate his small house for the holidays as part of the college's "Grand Illumination". He hires a firm from Boston to put every flashing colored light, plastic Santa & reindeer, and recorded music device he can fit on his house, sets the timer, and takes off on a holiday cruise! He comes back a few days later to find one of the most persistent busy-bodies dead on his living room floor. It's meant to look like an accident but Shandy knows it can't be, and his efforts to figure out what really happened are the basis of the mystery. Along the way we are introduced to some of the people that live in the small college town of Balaclava - and they have more than their fair share of interesting characters!

This is a classic cozy mystery, the first in a series that is well worth reading or listening to. Some elements are rather dated at this point - no cell phones, for example, and some characters have somewhat dated views - but don't let that bother you. Enjoy meeting the residents of Balaclava, and look forward to more of their exploits!

The narrator of this audio is easy to listen to. He doesn't differentiate the character's voices very much, but it's still easy to keep track of what's going on. One irritant, however, is that he mispronounces words every once in a while, and it can be jarring to the ear. For example, he used the word "crochets" (the needlework) rather than "crotchets" (a quirk or eccentricity). But all in all, a great book to listen to!

I chose this book based on the editor's summary hinting at some fun with the set-up of the off-the-chart Christmas decoration prank, and the hope of a fun Christmas based mystery. But all the fun was perfunctorily disposed of within a few paragraphs in the first chapter, and the rest of the story dissolves into a mediocre (and not so fun) TV movie style mystery.

While the secret behind the murders and mayhem on the Balaclava Campus turns out to be an interesting one, the process of getting to the truth is a tiresome exploration of pompous, self important academics and nitwit law enforcement personnel who don't even bother to investigate. The author has absolutely no ear for dialogue that real people would speak, filling the conversations with "I daresay you are right", "may I dare to hope that you are she?", "by my stars and garters", and (I kid you not) "By Yumpin' Yiminnie". The only way to tolerate this amateurish attempt is to pretend it's the screenplay for a "Murder She Wrote" episode and expect nothing more in the way of character development or suspense.

This is a frothy, enjoyable cozy, in accordance with my own rules for cozies: the murder(s) take place off camera, the victim is unattractive, the murderers more so, and the whole thing is intended more as entertainment than mental puzzle. Those who take exception to MacLeod's writing and dialogue for being unrealistic are entirely missing the point, and if you don't like a little goofiness in your reading matter, you won't like this. But if you have a taste for the absurd and you like wittiness rather than grittiness, you'll like this.

Yes. I read and loved the print version years ago and was delighted to find an old friend in the Audible library. I have been an avid reader all my life, but find that I enjoy audio books even more than print - especially when they are done well, as this one is.

The mystery is good and keeps the reader guessing and suspecting first one and then another until the very end, but the true charm is in Professor Shandy himself. His over-the-top reaction to the demands to decorate his house for Christmas have been a favorite memory of mine for years. If it seems a little harsh, this is quickly balanced by his remorse when he realizes the aftermath of his action - as well as his fear of the reprisals that are likely to come his way.

Nothing terrible about this book. It's cozy and comfortable for those who like to feel superior to others, the fall guys, those who take holiday trappings too seriously, talk too much and want too much from others. Unless all that bothers you (meaning you're a better person than I), this is a fine book to drift off to on an otherwise sleepless night, a murder mystery that cares not a wit about the victim and sees the killer as a tasteless clown.